


The Royal We

by poison_ivvy



Series: The Brave and the Bold [1]
Category: Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Christmas Fluff, Christmas Presents, Domestic Fluff, Eggnog, Eventual Plot, Fluff, Getting to Know Each Other, Human Disaster Eddie Brock, M/M, Mindless Fluff, Possessive Behavior, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-07
Updated: 2019-01-07
Packaged: 2019-10-06 01:21:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17335994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poison_ivvy/pseuds/poison_ivvy
Summary: Eddie gets a Bluetooth for Christmas. Venom thinks they already have enough teeth to go around, thank you very much.





	The Royal We

For Christmas, Anne gave him a Bluetooth earpiece. It was bulky and silver, with a bright blue on and off button on its’ shell. It looked something a senior citizen would find technologically savvy. Eddie stared at the clear packing blankly, mystified. Was this because he never picked up his phone?

“Well?” Anne asked, looking at him expectantly. “I’m surprised you haven’t gotten one already, honestly.”  
  
Eddie scratched the back of his neck, still eyeing the earpiece with confusion and trying to work out why she had given him an apparent relic from the early 2000’s.  
  
_THANK YOU,_ Venom prompted his head, the rumble of his voice sounding a tad impatient with Eddie’s moment of apparent slowness.  
  
 “Thank you,” Eddie parroted, meeting Anne’s eye with an automatic half smile. “It’s just, uh, why exactly…” he trailed off, feeling like there was something obvious he was missing.  
  
 Anne rolled her eyes. “It’s so you don’t look like a lunatic whenever you’re out in public,” she said, gesturing expansively at Eddie as if that should clear everything up.  
  
 “Less bizarre when you’re talking on the phone than to thin air, huh,” Eddie said, realization dawning at last. (At the back of his mind, Venom prickles defensively. _WE ARE NOT AIR, EDDIE._ )  “Shit Anne, that’s genius. Or I’m a dumbass. Either way, thank you,” he said, immediately cheered by the prospect of no longer getting mildly alarmed stares everywhere they went. Staying quiet when outdoors with Venom was a nice idea in theory but he’d found that talking out loud to the voice in his head made him feel inexplicably less crazy than trying to hold telepathic conversations.  
  
 Anne smiled, pleased with herself. She always had been good at gift giving, knowing exactly how to strike the right note between sentiment and practicality. Truth be told, it had been her idea to exchange gifts at Eddie’s new apartment, which had been entirely devoid of anything resembling Christmas spirit (or basic human furnishings) until she and Dan had swept in this afternoon laden with leftover tinsel and a steel carafe of eggnog.

 Now, thick loops of golden tinsel were draped over the windows and the water stained backs of the second-hand kitchen chairs where they sat. A half eaten plastic container of garishly frosted grocery store sugar cookies lay on the table between them, evidence of Eddie’s attempt at holiday hospitality. It wasn’t exactly homemade eggnog, but nowadays Eddie was finding that he ( _THEY_ ) appreciated sugar in all its’ forms. And who didn’t like festively shaped sprinkles?

EDDIE, WHAT IS THIS.

 ‘It’s a Bluetooth,’ Eddie thought.

WE HAVE ENOUGH TEETH, EDDIE.

Eddie snorted, choking on the sugar cookie that he hadn’t realized he had been midway through shoving into his mouth and earning a concerned look from Dan. ‘It’s not that kind of tooth, V.’

  “I’m fine,” he coughed, waving off Dan’s look of concern. “Wrong pipe.” Eddie cleared his throat, hastily swallowing a mouthful of eggnog and wincing when it made his eyes water. Skimping on the booze never had been an issue for Anne, who erred on the side of excess when it came to mixing her drinks.

 Anne rolled her eyes good naturedly, turning to hand Dan his own gift. “Your turn,” she said, smiling. As he set about making quick work of the neatly wrapped box, Venom snaked a tendril out to curl hesitantly over the Bluetooth, still in its’ plastic encasing. Eddie watched, amused, as the symbiote oozed curiously over the box, trying to find a way inside and finding itself thwarted by the tightly bound plastic. Turns out that it’s equally as infuriating to try and crack open hard plastic boxes with the benefit of alien super strength as it is without.

 Eddie watched silently as Dan exclaimed good naturedly at his gift (cufflinks, tasteful and silver) and tried not to snicker as he felt Venom’s increasingly petulant confusion. ‘It’s a kind of phone,’ he volunteered after a couple minutes, feeling fond.

 WE HATE IT, Venom rumbled, sounding put out. WE ALREADY HAVE A PHONE.

 Eddie shook his head, murmuring ‘Later, V, I’ll show you.’ He tried tugging the box out of Venom’s grip but by now it was liberally oozing symbiote goo, covered in a writhing, dripping mass of inky strands.

 “For fuck’s sake, V,” he muttered, trying in vain to shake the droplets of black matter off. They obstinately clung on, rippling like mercury.

 “Does he like it?” Dan asked, breaking the bubble of their quiet argument. Eddie dropped the box like it had burned him, eyes shooting up to meet Anne and Dan’s curious gaze. The box continued to hover in the air between them, spinning idly in the symbiote’s grasp.

 NO, Venom answered loudly.

 “Yes!” Eddie almost shouted. He shook his head, trying to quiet the feeling of exasperation that rolled through his mind like a thunderstorm. He reflexively shoved another sugar cookie into his mouth. “We, um, he, he’s just testing it out,” he said.

 He hadn’t had a straightforward or easy time getting everyone to a place where no one was questioning the sanity of Eddie’s decision to continue playing host to a deadly alien symbiote. At least, not actively. Anymore. But after several weeks, and then a couple of months had gone by without Eddie’s life devolving any further, both Anne and Dan had adopted a cautious attitude of acceptance towards Venom. In any case, Anne’s present had clearly been meant for the both of them ( _FOR **US**_ ) and Eddie found himself oddly warmed by the sentiment and the progress he suspected it signified.

Anne reached out and hesitantly stroked the top of the roiling surface of the mercurial droplets covering her gift. They recoiled instantaneously before converging again, slinking over Anne’s fingertips with the indulgent manner of a cat winding around someone’s ankles.

 “Guess they don’t have wireless devices where he’s from, huh?” Dan chuckled. Anne was still watching the symbiote’s tendrils slowly slithering over the box with an expression of feline curiosity.

 “Guess not.” Eddie shook his head, feeling self-conscious without fully knowing why.  


\---

 They finally got around to opening the box properly a couple hours later when their guests departed, and they were home alone once more. Venom had allowed Eddie to try shearing through the ridiculously heavy-duty plastic with a pair of sticky kitchen scissors for approximately twenty seconds before losing patience entirely and sending his essence surging through Eddie’s hands. The scissors clattered to the floor from his suddenly nerveless fingers, and then the plastic snapped cleanly in half like a popsicle stick. The loud crack sounded uncannily similar to the snap of a healthy adult femur and a feeling of smug satisfaction trickled down Eddie’s spine.

 FINALLY.

 Eddie rolled his eyes, shaking the Bluetooth and little instruction pamphlet out of the shredded packaging with hands still tinged with black.

 NOW WHAT. Venom, impatient bastard that he was, manifested himself over Eddie’s shoulder, hovering so that he could see the small device better.

 “Now, I pop this little sucker into my ear,” Eddie hooked the thick rim of the Bluetooth over the shell of his ear, “and then when I talk to myself like a crazy asshole, people are gonna think I’m on the phone instead of, you know, a fucking psychopath.” 

 Venom swung his head around to inspect the ear in question, otherworldly eyes as white as oblivion and still capable of conveying a sense of deep suspicion. EDDIE YOU ARE NOT ON THE PHONE, he said aloud, sounding for all in the world like he was trying to explain the color of the sky to Eddie. As if this were a simple concept that he had failed to grasp, which the symbiote found disappointing but not altogether shocking. Eddie tried not to feel insulted.

 “It’s a lot bigger compared to the stuff people use nowadays,” he continued doggedly. “That way everyone’s gonna notice it.” Venom slowly curled the tip of his tongue around the edge of the Bluetooth, tickling Eddie’s ear and ignoring his yelp of protest.

 “Just trust me, V,” he insisted, shaking his head not unlike a flea-bitten dog to get rid of the phantom ticklish sensation in his ear. Something cool dripped down his neck. And now there was alien saliva on his shirt collar, Eddie realized. Delightful.

 WE TRUST YOU, Venom rumbled, giving up on prodding the device in his ear in favor of curling around his neck like a python. Always inexplicably a degree either hotter or colder than Eddie’s skin, the symbiote always soothed a heat or chill Eddie didn’t even know he felt until it evaporated under Venom’s implacable touch.

“I promise this is gonna make going outside a lot more appealing for everyone,” Eddie said, tossing the destroyed packaging onto the counter and picking up a thermos with the leftover eggnog. He lifted it abruptly and drank deeply and too fast, Venom’s now jewel sized head nestled in the hollow of his throat and pulsing lightly with every rise and fall of Eddie’s throat.

 SHOW US. WE SHOULD GO OUTSIDE. NOW.

 Eddie staggered, finally finding enough feeling in his fingers to put the thermos of the decidedly non-virginal eggnog down. “Jesus, V,” he gasped, feeling the warmth of the bourbon lighting up his insides. He felt pleasantly unacquainted with his extremities. “Yeah, what the hell, alright,” he decided. He was tipsy but not useless. And besides, there was no doubt that his symbiote ( _YOURS YES_ ) wouldn’t let him walk into traffic. Probably.

 PROBABLY? PROBABLY? DEFINITELY. Venom sounded haughty, pointedly running a quick loop of the most recent occasions wherein he’d saved Eddie from his own propensity to daily disaster. _Touching too hot pans, trying to ambush interview a Bratva thug, dropping all his bags trying to answer his ringing phone, an ill-fated attempt at parallel parking, that spider on the ceiling…_

Eddie groaned, ignoring the greatest hits highlight reel drifting through his mind in favor of struggling into his jacket without dislodging the Bluetooth from his ear. Venom obligingly shifted lower around his neck, blending into the high collared leather and doing a passable imitation of the world’s most homicidal scarf.

ALSO WE ARE HUNGRY, EDDIE, Venom vibrated against his pulse. Eddie was suddenly acutely aware of the rush of blood through his jugular from both within his body and also from where the skin was growing warm under the symbiote’s weight. FOOD. LET’S GET FOOD.

 Eddie ambled towards the door, snagging the keys to his bike on the way. “Of course you’re fucking hungry,” he said, sounding fond despite himself.

 “How’s this, V, I’ll make you a deal,” he said conversationally, unlocking the door and shivering into his would-be scarf as the building’s perennial draft hit him. “You drive, and I’ll get us food?”

 DEAL.

**Author's Note:**

> This will be hopefully be the first part in a series about the new but not necessarily improved fate and fortune of a man formerly only known as Eddie Brock.


End file.
